"Forth is a simple, natural computer language. It has achieved remarkable acceptance where efficiency is valued. It evolved in the 1960s on a journey from university through business to laboratory. This is the story of how a simple interpreter expanded its abilities to become a complete programming language/operating system."

Typically when the history of Forth is discussed, it start at NRAO. This insight farther back to the evolution of the system is fascinating.

You can see the actual evolution of the system from a simple command interpreter all the way up to the full blown environment it became as of the late 80's and early 90's.

It's keen insight in to the history of computing from the point of view of simplicity. Chuck Moore isn't one to brood on abstractions. He uses the system to uplift the environment to his naturally low level way of thinking about machines and computing. His writings on ColorForth and how he applies it to his chip design work is also fascinating.

Many of us are more and more detached and separated from the machines that we run. Today, the computers themselves are abstractions built on other computers. High level environments running in VMs hosted on remote systems. The domains requiring local machines are shrinking every day. So, it's nice to read something like this and reconnect, if just for a minute, back to the time when every byte and clock cycle mattered.

It also interesting in light of the rise of the low powered machines, and the rise of the hacker/makers excited over blinking LEDs on a micro controller they bought for $1.